back to article NASA spots new Mars meteorite crater

NASA has captured the best ever before and after shots depicting a meteorite strike. The strike in question happened on Mars in March 2012 but was only spotted earlier this year. The long wait came because while the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter beams back pictures of the Red Planet daily, not all are immediately examined. …

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  1. Evil Auditor Silver badge

    amanfrommars lost his home.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      Looks more like ATeenagerFromMars has broken out. Wash twice a day in KlearaPlanet - it may help

  2. MrT

    HIRISE image...

    ...and article on NASA's photojournal site here.

    1. harmjschoonhoven
      Happy

      Re: HIRISE image...

      I saw a dome until I viewed the picture with my head upside-down. The curious thing is I had no problem seeing the crater afterwards when I returned to my preferred viewing position.

  3. Yag

    mmmh...

    We need something for scale.

    Something like, I don't know... Washington DC, with the crater centered on the Capitol.

    It might be the only way to get funding to find a way to prevent us going the way of the Velociraptor.

    1. Chris G

      Way of the Velociraptor

      Was Bruce Lee in that?

      1. F111F
        Coat

        Re: Way of the Velociraptor

        Clever girl...err boy?

        ...Mine's the one with the map of the park in the pocket.

    2. MrT

      Re: mmmh...

      Check the HiRISE picture link - the article says the main impact is about 150ft/48m across, (a couple of brontosauri) - the two big ones would occupy a space about as big as a football pitch... smaller impacts across half a dozen or so. Looks fairly head on since its almost circular.

      1. Steve the Cynic

        Re: mmmh...

        "Looks fairly head on since its almost circular"

        For impact craters this line of reasoning is more or less complete bulldinkey. Impact craters for all but the shallowest impact angles are round because the crater is caused by an *explosion* whose effects are almost completely independent of the angle of impact.

        Unless you are talking about the shot pattern of the array of craters. I'd give you that, sort of.

        1. MrT

          Re: mmmh...

          It seems that way since the picture shows a fairly even spread of smaller points - there doesn't seem to be a pattern, though possibly more to the lower part of the image, and given the scale it looks like stuff has stayed fairly close. It might be the biggest impact observed, but it's nothing like the Arizona crater.

          However, NASA won't have imaged it using HiRISE at the time - two years or so of erosion will have softened things. The report mentions evidence of nearby landslips that they attribute to the shock of the impact.

    3. Rick Giles
      Pirate

      Re: mmmh...

      "We need something for scale.

      Something like, I don't know... Washington DC, with the crater centered on the Capitol.

      It might be the only way to get funding to find a way to prevent us going the way of the Velociraptor."

      Most of us Americans wouldn't give two shits if DC got obliterated by a meteor. We'd probably even party.

      1. Blain Hamon
        Alien

        Ever seen the scene in Mars Attacks?

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VepS-IyKOLE

        "They blew up congress! Ha ha ha!"

  4. Don Jefe
    Unhappy

    I'm so disappointed. I expected at least one of the 'that's clearly a convex shape, NASA is trying to hide evidence from us' loons to have already posted. Everything seems unbalanced now.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Alien

      OMG! will you just look at the yellow crater to the right of your post!

      Of course the so-called "independent experts" [called by who?] will claim its natural, that it's merely twinned uplift peaks offset from the true centre with a collapsed rim to the south catching the low angle light, but if your so BLIND that you cant see THE FACE then may be its rite that the LIZARD PEOPLE WON?

  5. Arachnoid

    So........

    Another planets interstellar lander crashes in to Mars Spooky!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    >> beams back pictures of the Red Planet daily, not all are immediately examined.

    Nice to know that the richness of digital cameras also afflicts NASA - I too have an ever increasing pile of snaps that I just know I'm going to get around to sorting through Real Soon Now.

    (of course NASA has a finite window for capture before the orbiter fails so it makes sense to blaze away ahead of digestion, let alone having the chance to find transient phenomena like this. Whereas when my camera fails [i.e. gets dropped] it'll be replaced the next day by something that lets me be even sillier. The hi-res HUD camera (step-child of "Glass") will be the final tar baby)

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